Sara found the dead dog another fifty feet from the footprints in the fresh six inches of snow.  She froze.  Eggnog yellow beams shone from the Ford Focus, the slow drip of crimson made bloody breaks across the brightness of the beams that illuminated the dog, its brindle body buried in a shallow blanket of snow. 

She waited and watched—black stripes on a brown back melting snow below it—then looked out across the blackness.  The snow fell on the piles of dried husks from a September harvest.  She thought about getting back into the car, driving into the winter night, leaving the stinging snow behind her.  As she stood, she remembered a carnival ride with her brother at the Polk County Fair almost twenty years ago, strapped in together, the oscillating steel slowing to a final stop.  She unbuckled the leather belt, lifted the latch on the shoe box cart, stepped off and ran to another ride.

But the dead dog beckoned her back through the piling snow.  The wind blew across the withered corn field and the powder pummeled her face.  She turned away, lifted a glove to wipe away the tears that melted down her cheek.  She steadied herself in the breeze and whirled around again to deal with the dead dog.  In the blowing snow it only appeared to be asleep.  It lay with its back legs crossed, one resting softly on the other, its tail where it should be, its penis, spayed and in place.  Blood soaked the snow below its head. 

The Christmas Eve turkey and mashed potatoes writhed in her stomach and she looked away again, a blast of air settling the build-up of amylase in her stomach and throat.  She did not look at the body again.  She crunched snow back to the Focus and climbed in, started it, and turned the wipers on. The blades broke through snow on the windshield and she left the dead dog in the middle of the road.

Sara thought about turning the radio on, but the broken body of the pit bull spoiled the backdrop.  Instead she rumbled along in her front-wheel drive sleigh, listened to the potato chip crunch of compacted powder below.  The wind blew and the snow piled in drifts where tufts of wild grass blocked its path along the road.  She had left her parents’ house early because of the storm.  The drive from Baxter to her apartment in Des Moines only took an hour, but dealing with the dead dog had caused a delay.  Her stomach gurgled again, and she shifted her butt on the slippery leather seat, the events of the day fading into the puffing vapor of sleet and snow melting on the windshield.

This morning, Sara had loaded the aluminum foil pan of sweet potatoes into the car.  She placed them in the backseat, kicking piles of senior semester term papers and a dusty red blanket to the floorboard.  Today, Christmas Eve, with its cold north breeze and the milky glow of Christmas lights, dimmed by the daylight haze, replaced work with a late morning, sweat pants, and soup-bowl size cups of coffee in the den.  But the one hour commute to her parents’ house, and the four-hour talk over turkey legs, mashed potatoes, and green beans would mean the King-Kong pile of laundry, yoga, and binge-watching The Closer would be a bust. 

She buried all of this as she turned her Focus onto Iowa-17, a broken stretch of asphalt that bounced along for another ten miles to her parents’ house.  She gripped the steering wheel, swallowed.  Mounds of sand and asphalt for the interminable county road repairs lined the road, the fissured concrete pining for new tar, creosote—respite from the sweaty, cow-pattie Iowa summers and blustery days of dried pin oak and elm leaves whipping along cold and tired winter roads.  The clouds billowed black and gray and the snow began to spit as she pulled into her parent’s drive.  

Sara opened the back door, and got out the sweet potatoes.  She lifted the gate hasp on the chain link fence.  The house was old.  Piles of autumn leaves huddled along the basement masonry, breaking the veil of peeling beige paint.  She froze.  Her brother had painted it last about five summers ago.  He had taken a week off from his job at the co-op.  He labored along in the shade of the morning, brushing blankets of paint along the bumpy, beveled masonry.  Sara had shown up for lunch; school was out, and Jason was there in blue jeans and a gray t-shirt, lapping on layers of sweaty paint in the sticky summer humidity. It took him a few weeks to finish the job, and it had never been painted since. 

She walked up the steps.  The beige carpet blended with cold concrete.  A crow cawed from the seventy-foot elm along the fence; its branches writhed, groped, for nothing.  Sara sighed, steadied the dishes, kicked at the storm door, and waited.  Eventually, it swung open; her mother, gray silk hair, angled chin, crow’s feet along blue eyes, mouth frail, quivered.  She smiled and hugged Sara.  Sara squeezed by into the living room.  The room breathed roasted turkey and Sara could feel the heat of braised bird sink into her sweater.  The brown and orange rug still rested under her father’s recliner in the corner—a week’s worth of newspaper piled at its side.  He walked through the dining room now, arms outstretched to relieve her of the burden she carried. 

“Hello, sweetheart, how are you.”  The Hai Karate hugged her more than he did, entered her narrow nostrils as he leaned into her shoulder, a side-hug as he slipped the dish of sweet potatoes from her, went to the kitchen.

Coffee brewed below the cat clock in the kitchen and it coaxed Sara onto the linoleum.  Her father retrieved an oven mitt from the drawer and opened the oven.  The bird glowed brown through the heat that wormed its way up.  He rubbed his hands together.  “Almost ready!”

The table had been set for four.  She hated this.  Her brother had not been at a Christmas dinner for four years.  She had been grading a stack of papers when she got the call, a wretched day when roads were locked under ice and snow.  On the other end of the line, her dad asked her how she was, what she was doing, when she’d be back home.

“Grading papers on Christmas Eve,” she had said, tossing a pen on another pile of paper.  She had waited on the line. 

Then her dad spoke.  “Sara, your brother…he…Jason’s dead.  He…he, had an accident.  Slid off the road, no seat belt.  His car hit an elm along Iowa 17.”

Silence.  The sudden slamming stop of a carnival ride, the kind of stop that could still be felt on your butt as you waited in your seat to unbuckle the belts.  Her mother got on the phone, told her of the arrangements.  She told Sara to pray.  She told her sorry.

But today, Sara just ate.  She soaked up the decaying paint and thawed icy roads with sweet potatoes and turkey.   They were almost finished when her dad had mentioned that he needed to get some painting done in the house.  Her mother put her hands to her face.  Sobs.  Sara looked at her plate, piles of snapped turkey bones, sinewy strings of tendon, gristle, grease.  She was full.  Finished.  She stood, reached a hand to her mother’s shoulder.  Silence.  Her father stared ahead listening to the death watches from the cat clock on the wall. 

Her mother stood up from the table.  Her soft graying hair covered her misty brown eyes.  Sara looked away—her purse, her coat, then to the cat ticking away on the wall—but the request came anyway.

“Before you go, there’re a few boxes piled in the basement.  They…it’s your brother’s stuff.  I‘ve asked you to take it with you at least ten times.  I don’t want it here anymore…I can’t…” 

Tears.  The interminable tick of a cat counting time.  Sara leaned into her mother, squeezed.  “I have to get going.  Merry Christmas though.”  The boxes remained there, cold and dead in the dark farmhouse cellar.

Now, driving away from the pile of dead dog, Sara cried.  She slowed her Focus as the wind whipped a plume of fine snow across her car, it wobbled like a roller coaster and she felt the car skid for a moment.  Her heart raced as she pumped the brakes.  The car slowed, then stopped.  The car sat frozen in the road, arms of the oak and elm trees dipping and diving like those creaking and grinding carnival rides from years ago.  Flakes landed on the windshield, warmed, turned to tears on the smooth glass, then the quick turn of a wiper blade whipped them away.  She sat another moment, put the Focus in reverse, and made the slow, slippery journey back down Iowa 17.  The snow had stopped by the time she reached the dog.  It was buried in snow, but a small bump in the powder had made a memory of the dead dog in the cold, frozen night.  She got out, opened the back door, reached for the old red blanket.  Sara unfolded it and laid the blanket out neatly. She walked over to the dog.  It was cold now; the frigid air that had crept in over the last half-hour had tried to forget the dead dog.  She lifted it, embracing it to her chest as she balanced it across the frosted asphalt, and laid him carefully in the back seat.  She closed the door and drove home. 

She arrived in Des Moines, took him to the back yard; she got a shovel from her garage and dug.  She worked the spade under reddened, cold hands; the earth and snow piled up along her muddy boots.  The dog still rested in the red blanket. She lifted him and then laid him in the earth.  She looked at the dog, wiped away salty tears.  The snow began to blanket him again as she moved the piles of cold earth over the body for the last time. 

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